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International Journal of Engineering Research and Developmente-ISSN: 2278-067X, p-ISSN: 2278-800X, www.ijerd.comVolume 4, Issue 6 (October 2012), PP. 54-61 The Numerical Simulation of a Staged Transverse Injection behind a Rearward Facing Step into a Mach 2 Stream in a Confined Environment 1 John Vivian Prashant and 2Kuldeep Sharma1,2 Bachelor of Technology Students, Department of Aerospace Engineering, Indian Institute of Space Science & Technology,Valiyamala,Trivandrum,Kerala,India,695547 .Abstract: The primary aim of this work was to carry out the numerical simulation of a staged transverseinjection behind a rearward facing step into a Mach 2 stream in a confined environment. This problemhas been investigated experimentally by McDaniel et al. And the same conditions have been recreatedfor the numerical simulation. An extensive and in-depth comparison of the numerical predictions withthe experimental results has been presented through plots of various flow parameters at differentlocations in the test section. The numerical results show an excellent agreement with the experimentalresults. Deviations from the experimental results are also observed in some scenarios due to the inabilityof the numerical schemes to capture the effects of shocks and expansion fans. Efforts to study the natureand cause of these deviations have also been made. This particular cold flow mixing problem has beencompletely analysed and has been solved numerically using k-omega (SST) and realizable k-epsilonviscous models. The flow parameters have been analysed and plotted for both with and without injectioncases. The mixing has been performed using both with and without species utility of the software. Themain focus of this work is to try to understand the mixing of the fuel and air in the combustion chamber.Good mixing is the most important prerequisite for good combustion. The central focus has been laid ontrying to understand the staged transverse injection technique of mixing. Keywords--- Supersonic mixing, Scramjet, Transverse Injection, Numerical Simulation I. INTRODUCTION Basically a scramjet is a variant of a ramjet engine in which the combustion process takes place insupersonic airflow. This allows the scramjet to efficiently operate at extremely high speeds. Fig.1: General Components of a Scramjet engine (Picture taken from NASA website on 20 sep 2010) Hypersonic flight within the atmosphere generates enormous drag and high temperature. Within theengine the temperature can be nearly six-times greater than that of the surrounding air. Maintaining combustionin the supersonic flow presents many challenges such as injection, mixing, ignition, and burning within veryshort duration of time. Mixing, Ignition and flame holding in a scramjet combustor are the major challenges in ascramjet operation. At high speeds when air enters in the combustion chamber its temperature increases due toshock interactions. And if the flow becomes subsonic the temperature increases to an extent that it causesdissociation of air molecules which is an endothermic reaction. This leads to inefficient heat addition. Due tothis enough transitional kinetic energy isn’t imparted to the molecules and the thrust decreases. This is thereason to adopt supersonic free stream in the combustion chamber of scramjets. Recirculation regions are usedfor flame holding because of subsonic Mach numbers in these regions. Supersonic combustion involvesturbulent mixing, shock interaction and heat release in supersonic flow. The flow field within the combustor of 54

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The Numerical Simulation of a Staged Transverse Injection behind a Rearward Facing Step into ascramjet engine is very complex and causes a lot of difficulties in the design and development of a supersoniccombustor with an optimized geometry. Efficient combustors should promote sufficient mixing of the fuel andair so that the desired chemical reactions can take place [1],[2].The 2 basic approaches for verification ofscramjet design are Ground test facilities and Numerical simulations. Ground tests alone cannot give data withsufficient accuracy for design of hypersonic systems. Due to the complex nature of the problems componentlevel testing will not be able to simulate accurately the complex flow field. Also, the quality of air is difficult tosimulate in the test facilities. Therefore there is a need to estimate the flight performance based on the results ofground tests. This can be accomplished only through the use of mathematical modelling of the flow, which is tobe solved to first reproduce the result of the ground test and then used for predicting the flight conditions.Numerical computation involves evolving algorithms to solve the Navier Strokes equations or their variantssuch that sharp gradient regions near the shocks are captured with numerical diffusion or overshoot. Theprediction of wall heat transfer rate. The advantage of mathematical model is that once it is validated it can beused to conduct several numerical experiments with various modifications of flow parameters. Also, they aremuch less expensive compared to experiments. This is the current day approach to find solutions to theproblems of high-speed flight. II. Transverse Injection: The fuel is injected perpendicular to the flow direction. The penetration of the fuel into the flowdecides the extent of mixing. Mixing is more when the penetration is higher. But due to the obstruction of theflow by the injectant, bow shocks are produced which hinder the mixing. Fig. 2: Transverse Injection III. DESCRIPTION OF THE EXPERIMENT Flow field description of the experiment conducted by James C. McDaniel, Douglas G. Fletcher, Roy J.Hartfield and Steven D. Hollo is as follows: The air supply for the wind tunnel used for the non-reactingmeasurements in this experiment consisted of a centrifugal air compressor (0.75kg/sec maximum output) and56.6 cubic meters of high pressure (2.07 MPa) storage volume. The air was filtered and dried to a nominal dewpoint of -56 C. Nominal tunnel stagnation conditions were 300 K and 274 kPa [2]. TABLE 1 FLOW PARAMETERS PARAMETER TUNNEL INJECTOR Po 274 KPa 263 KPa To 300 K 300 K M 2 (test section inlet) 1 (exit) Pinf 35 KPa (free stream) 139 (exit) Tinf 167 K (free stream) 250 (exit) Uinf 518 m/s (free stream) 317 m/s (exit) Mass Flow Rate 0.2 kg/s 1.64 g/sThe same conditions have been recreated for numerical analysis on FLUENT. Fig. 3: Schematic diagram of the experimental setup 55

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The Numerical Simulation of a Staged Transverse Injection behind a Rearward Facing Step into a Gauge total pressure=274000 Pa INFLOW Supersonic/initial gauge pressure=35000 Pa Gauge pressure=35000 Pa OUTLET V. RESULTS Flow field was simulated using FLUENT for both with and without injection cases and differentparameters like P/Pinf, T/Tinf, U/Uinf, and Mole fraction of injectant were plotted at different X/D (axial)locations. Results obtained from computational analysis were compared with experimental results taken fromthe paper by McDaniel et al. These plots and contours are given in appendix. It has been observed thatcomputational results are well matching with experimental results and error is within 10%. The deviation fromexperimental results is due to the limitations of the viscous model to exactly model the real problem and errorsinvolved in computation. Here we have used 2 equation models (SST k-omega & k-epsilon) for turbulencemodelling. A major assumption of almost all two-equation models is that the turbulent fluctuations, u, v, andw, are locally isotropic or equal. This is true for the smaller eddies at high Reynolds numbers. The large eddiesare in a state of steady anisotropy. But here in this flow situation Mach number is pretty high so eddies aregenerated. So due to eddies two equation models are not able to capture exact phenomenon and that’s whyexperimental and computational results are not same.First of all a grid independence study was carried out usingSST k-omega viscous model and it was found that results become independent of grid size after around 3.83lakh cells. So results were plotted for 3.83 lakh cells. From Figure 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 we can clearly see that asX/D increases penetration of injectant (air) into the free stream increases because air is injected into the freestream near X/D=0 , so as X/D increases air is mixed with free stream and more penetration takes place. Thishappens due to vortex creation which lifts the plume from surface to core and hence plume spreads. From thesefigures we can see that computational results (left part of figure) are matching with experimental results (rightpart of the figure).In figure 12 & 13 expansion fan, reattachment shock and barrel shock regions can be seenclearly. Figure 14 shows the velocity profile in test section and recirculation region near the step can be seenclearly. Figure 15 shows the mole fraction spread of the injectant (air). It’s evident from the contour plot thateventually as X/D increases mixing of free stream and injectant (air) takes place. In a similar way Fig16, 17 &18represent shocks, velocity profile, recirculation region etc. in test section without injection. Different viscousmodels were used to solve the problem. Spalart-Allmaras & SST k-omega was used to solve without injectioncase and SST k-omega & Realizable k-epsilon were used for with injection case. Comparison of SST k-omegaand Spalart-Allmaras is shown in Fig19 and it can be clearly seen that both models give very good prediction ofactual problem. So we can use any one of the models for this problem. Fig26 shows a comparison between SSTk-omega and Realizable k-epsilon and it can be clearly seen that k-omega gives better results near the wall. Thisis because SST (shear stress transport) k-omega model is capable of capturing the physical phenomenon near thewall which is because of shear stress. K-omega model resolves viscous sub layer without any significant error.K-epsilon model doesn’t give very good results near the wall even after using the wall function (standard wallfunction). So to capture the phenomenon in viscous sub layer we have to use a more powerful wall functionalong with the k-epsilon model. Figure 20 P/Pinf & T/Tinf at X/D=-2.05 shows the effect of recirculation region. The temperaturedecreases and the pressure almost remains constant near the wall. Figure 21 shows pressure and temperaturevariation along transverse direction at X/D=0 for without injection case. As Y/D increase from 0 to 2, pressuredecreases because of expansion fan encountered. As y/D increases from 2 to 5 pressure starts to increasebecause of reattachment shocks and after that pressure becomes equal to free stream pressure. Same trend isobserved for temperature also. Similar phenomenon is observed in Figure 22. Figure 23-25 show the variation ofmole fraction of injectant at different X/D locations. Figure 27-30 show the P/Pinf , T/Tinf at various X/Dlocations. Effects of expansion fans & reattachment shocks can be clearly seen on these parameters from theseplots. VI. CONCLUSION Commercially available software’s Gambit and Fluent were used to carry out meshing and simulationof the flow over a rearward facing step .Also simulations were carried out along with staged transverseinjections. Simulations results for without injection and with injection cases were compared with results takenfrom experiments conducted by McDaniel et al. It was found that computation results were closer to the LIIF 57

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The Numerical Simulation of a Staged Transverse Injection behind a Rearward Facing Step into aresults than PLIIF. Some deviations were noticed in computation and experimental results due to the inability ofthe numerical scheme to simulate the real flow. This happens because of the reason that numerical scheme triesto build a mathematical model of the real problem, which is never exactly same as of the real problem. TheFLUENT software was efficient in capturing the overall essence of the problem taken up. The staged transverseinjection gives good mixing but still more modifications could be made to enhance mixing further. The optimalgridding and selection of the relevant mathematical models is very necessary for achieving clear and accurateresults. It is also very important to select the correct mathematical models on the numerical solvers to ensureaccurate results. Numerical methods provide more freedom and agility to carry out hypersonic tests at anaffordable price. But proper evaluation of the software’s capacity to predict correct results should be done. References[1] D Chakraborty, A. P Roychowdhury, V. Ashok and P. Kumar .Numerical investigation of staged transverse sonic injection in Mach 2 stream in confined environment. Aeronautical Journal,2003,107(1078), 719-729.[2] Mcdaniel, J.C., FletcheR, D., Hartfield, R. and Hollo, S. Staged transverse injection into Mach 2 flow behind[3] rearward facing step: a 3D compressible test case for hypersonic combustor code validation,1991,AIAA paper No 91-5071.APPENDIX 1) Contour plots for cross-flow injectant mole fraction distribution Fig6:-X/D=-3 Fig7:-X/D=0 Fig8:-X/D=3 Fig9:-X/D=9 58